We here at Ascension Lutheran hope you will understand how important it is to keep asking those questions. We'd like to spend some time with you considering the first question, "Who do you say Jesus is?" Ultimately, it's the most important question and for us the most important answer.

Before we move ahead we need to do a brief (really brief!) history of the world.

• God made us so that we would be happy only if we had a proper relationship with Him. Any and all attempts at happiness apart from a relationship with our Creator will fail. Don't take my word for it. Just filter that statment through your own experience.

• A brief history of man shows something like this: Great civilizations rise, incredible energy and thought flourish, great buildings shoot up to the sky, and then it all goes belly-up, falling apart in decay and ruin. Cruelty unbounded rises to the top. Something is terriby wrong and needs to be righted. All human beings know this.

• God gives each individual a conscience. They can tell the difference between right and wrong. But no one, except those who are self-deluded, believes that they have done a great job in doing right. There is a very thin veneer stretched over civilization. It doesn't take much to strip it away.

• God selects a man whose name is Abram (Abraham). He tells this man that through Him He is going to create a new "nation", a new people. He will spend centuries revealing Himself to these people in ways never done before. He is wanting to teach these people (the Hebrews, later the Jews) several things that are very important: That there is only one God; that He wants a relationship with them and all people; and that He cares very much how they conduct their lives before Him and their fellow men. He is also teaching them about a mysterious person called the Messiah. I say mysterious because the description of him seems contradictory. On the one hand He will rule as a King and His kingdom will have no end; on the other hand, He will be despised and rejected by men.

• And then the shocker. During the height of the greatest civilization of all time, Rome, a man appears from this "nation" of Jews who talks as though He were God. He forgives sins. And when He does, He is talking about the sins that one man has committed against another man, as though He were somehow involved in the offense. And note also that He does not consult the injured party, but forgives without condition. He says He has always existed, and that He will come at the end of time and space to judge all who have lived. And here comes the corker. Because He comes from the Jews (The Lord thy God is ONE), He says that He is not part of the universe, a part of the god-essence, but that He is in fact God who has come from eternity into time and space. Don't miss that. He has said what no sane human being has ever said, ever!